I know this is a great way to start an article, but I recently spent time in a mental institution. Yes, I know, I must be a loony right? No. I have bipolar disorder type 1 as well as Borderline Personality Disorder, ADD, and severe anxiety. I am on the correct medication for it, but life gets the best of all of us sometimes and we all get down in the dumps. When I got down in the dumps this time, it was bad. I needed to be in a safe place. A place where I could not hurt myself. It scared me, because I don’t normally get like that. So my therapist, husband and I decided that I needed to be in a place where I could recuperate and get the help I needed to get better. Bipolar depression is nothing to mess with. So off I went to Saint Vincent’s Behavioral Health facility in Little Rock, Arkansas. I thought I would spend a few days, rest, relax, chill out, get my medicines changed, because at the time we thought that was the problem. My first day in, I talked to my Psychiatrist there, and he told me that he thought my problem was NOT my medication. I was like “WHAT?” So how did I go from living such a normal life to being so depressed? It was situational, behavioral. It was MY fault. I couldn’t see that. But over the course of the next couple of days I learned some things.
In my first session of group therapy, the guy was talking about “labels” this and “labels” that... and I was wondering why he kept talking about labels. He looked directly at me and said “You are not bipolar.” I got offended and said “Yes sir, I am!” And so the debate went on. He told me that I may HAVE bipolar disorder but that I AM not bipolar, I AM not BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder) and I AM not ADD. I just HAVE symptoms of these disorders, but I AM so much more than that. I had a personal session with him that afternoon and he asked me what it is I do that calms me. I told him that I play guitar, and I sing, and write and get creative with my bad self. He laughed and said, “Well, what kind of guitar do you play?” I told him acoustic and he asked me would I like him to bring me an acoustic guitar for group that evening because he collected guitars and he could do that for me.
